Earthrise Diary 409

© text Don Diespecker 2009

The Earthrise Diary

Don Diespecker


The month hurries by and the weather has been wet so that my morning walks have been interrupted or not made at all. Yesterday and today (April 26) the air at sunrise has been cool and crystal clear. Along Darkwood Road the roadside trees are surprisingly colourful—something that’s best appreciated by walking and seeing the crowns and canopies: driving by isn’t recommended (the road is so damaged it appears to have been mortared in places and that’s hardly surprising given that 50- to 100-m of the road leading to Richardson’s Bridge was in the river (this is negligible damage given the state of the road at and near Justin’s Bridge, further up, and also that part of the road on high ground (‘the mountain’), according to Des Willis who’s been driving his VW bus over some horror stretches. When walking, I see that most of the roadside trees are native privet mixed with occasional white cedars and that the trees are tightly packed because they’ve had to grow up past (European) privet. The seeds of the bigger trees continue their autumn ripening and show a surprising variation in colours that range from a fuzzy neutral grey (in sunlight) through pale watery blue to almost-purple. The white cedar seeds seem to be mostly green but the foliage of these trees is significantly turning yellow or golden. A vehicle driver would see only a meld of pastel shades while driving and would also be unwise to look up; but a walker may see the subtle colour distinctions clearly when close and as a generous blend of green and gold when seeing the trees more distantly. One of these days when I understand the directions for my new digital camera I may be able to include a picture or two of the trees. I’ve realized, too, that vehicle drivers would seldom see the colouring seeds or hear the faint but continuous pattering sound of seeds falling while a range of birds feed in the canopy. Darkwood Road’s autumn colours must seem vague at best to those who only drive.
Also notable this month: masses of river mist rising to become cloud. As I walk ‘down’ I get a kick out of seeing the mist rising and turning to cloud that drifts like smoke over the forested lower slopes below Dorrigo—and on the way back up again, with the sun just a bit higher, I get my back nicely warmed while walking home to breakfast. This part of the Valley is a photographer’s delight at sunrise: the heads of seeding grasses standing in the paddocks glint in the morning sun and spider web strands shine and glisten.
There were five noteworthy days in a row in mid-April when the weather was relatively dry and the sun made it seem like summer again and that was a good time to catch up on raking, axing and log hurling (returning flood debris to the river, in other words). The river continues to change colour when there are showers—perhaps caused by post-flood clearing or landslips upstream. This morning the water’s a slightly darker green, the rapids bright white because the river remains high and falls slowly. About two days ago the river was a paler green, an eau-de-Nil softer-looking colour.

The two floods here recently are still heavily in my mind because of the damage and the extra work required to repair that damage: schedules and agendas have had to be revised. I’d intended to quote ironically Shakespeare’s lines (‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood” &c &c) but the commentary line that marks that in Julius Caesar somehow seems more apt:

‘Opportunity to be seized on all occasions of life (IV:3).’

I was brooding about this in the ruined gardens. I was surprised that I could still see the near-concentric circles of the last mowing runs on the food-washed green parts of Big Lawn while lower parts of the lawn are distinguished by a liberal top dressing of muddy silt. Near the Dog’s Garden and my flattened roses and dahlias some early autumn moss, bright green, has begun to oust the tropical chick weed and following the flooding most of that soft bright green moss is still surprisingly in place. It strikes me as amazing that the river could run across the gardens here to depths of 2-m to 3-m pushing logs and destroyed trees of all shapes and sizes without destroying the moss and the lawns, but the moss is a sparkling green and it’s been largely untroubled by the flooding. The pickets and wire fencing around the Dog’s Garden have been flattened and tangled by debris. I’ve been able to salvage, as gifts of the river, clumps of lomandra and some bulrushes too. How strange that some well-rooted trees were broken as if matchwood but more pliant shrubs, perennials and small plants were flattened, part buried in mud, yet stood again when lifted and carefully propped. There were 10 or so bleeding heart seedlings growing from the (onetime flood-deposited) soils on the belvedere: two floods removed all but one of these and much of the soil I’d carefully leveled there. Flooding spared me the task of thinning and the surviving bleeding heart now seems stronger than ever with it’s big juvenile leaves and the faithful old red salvia clone (hauled up from the mud and propped, pruned and washed) looks better than ever (the original salvia in a nearby garden, similarly, is alive and well—having been planted there in 1985 or thereabouts). Everything changes; some things change more than others.

I’m including, below an essay I wrote recently during the floods and which I lightly called ‘The Big Latte’ because of the colour (and sent this to some friends by email). The first flood was in February; this (second) one started at the end of March.

© text Don Diespecker 2009
The Second Flood

Bellinger big floods look wild and dangerous and are the colour either of latte or sometimes the colour of dark chocolate. This one’s the latte version. Bellinger, after all, means clear water.
This is a river that can flood in as little as a day and a half with steady rain. All the Bellinger’s floods are different: many are minor and Old Hands will pityingly say that ‘That wasn’t a flood; that was just a rise.’ A Big One gets the adrenalin going and makes us Locals leap into action. These floods all begin with Flood Rain: a dense and steady rain that looks innocently like very heavy drizzle, but when you’re up close and in it Flood Rain is a soaking experience: it feels deeply soaking, penetrating and unstopping. These rains begin modestly and deceptively and always become heavier—by which time everything in sight is saturated and running with water determinedly seeking it’s own level. Rivulets and streams are quickly up and running and ponds form and grow as you watch, open-mouthed. A February flood primed us for this one, i.e., soils were already close to saturation and the fat river (as Jannelle used to say) was poised. Characteristically, Flood Rain always gets heavier: then it no longer resembles a soupy thick drizzle; it quickly is tumultuous and it hammers on the iron roof and takes up a dark position in your head. As the rain increases the air becomes so dense as to look quite like smoke. The smells of the flood rising from the riverbank are sweet and sour—not unpleasant, but filled with dangerous promise. That’s a notion reinforced by the sounds of the flooding river lifting in the rain; as the river gets up it roars at the world. One way or the other, you want to be there to see it, study it, record it, but usually there’s too much ordinary work to be done. When the river’s high enough to display its special effects here at Earthrise the torrent enters the gardens. Maybe enters isn’t the right word; perhaps penetrates, at first, and then it surges over everything that can be subdued by the force of uncontrollable wild water. Notice the word, wild (thanks for that suggestion, Sharon). It’s an apt word, largely because there’s nothing that can stop it or in any way reduce what it’s doing. Pouring oil on the waters? No, because the flooding river is a transitory thing: it crushes everything in its way and relentlessly keeps going, just as the blitzkrieg destroys what’s in its path. The river’s way, after all, is the river’s own rived, gouged-out Way. The drama begins when the river invades paddocks and gardens and it’s this muscling in and into that gives us headaches, hard work and sleepless nights. At least a ferocious untamed flooding river is a lot more interesting than a tame one; the Bellinger looks tame only when it’s down and diminished by drought: that’s when it moves slowly without grace or beauty, is beset by algae, and is missing its usual forcefulness.
*
Flood rain starts on Monday, March 30 2009. Its intensity increases into the evening and it rains steadily through the night. I’d been to town in the morning, done some chores and had my anti flu and anti-pneumococcal shots. In the afternoon I talk to Kerry on the phone and he helps me with some of my computer difficulties. By the time we complete our discussions and key tapping we agree it’s raining cats and dogs at both Moonee Beach and here in the Darkwood. Trouble ahead.
It rains all night but there’s still a long way for the river to climb before it floods so I sleep, but uneasily, with one eye open as we say when a flood starts in the Bellinger Valley. The river is well up on Tuesday morning (March 31 2009). I meet Monica on the road and we chat about what we both think will happen. By now the flood is dark brown, rising mightily and is about to engulf the Plains Crossing Bridge. I decide to remove one difficulty: I drive the Honda to high ground. I phone Enrico and then drive up to Dreamtime, parking the Honda in front of the Big House (presently empty). Relieved, I walk back down to Earthrise. The roadside ditches here have been ‘lined’ by a rough concrete on both sides: bulk concrete from a dump truck was spread and broomed over dense cobble-sized quarry stone). The ditches are running fast, roaring; storm water pours toward the road from the forested high ground on the south side; ponding of the upper paddocks of the Deer Park begins and it won’t be long before the paddocks fill and the excess spills into Darkwood Road opposite my gate (an inch of rain on an acre yields more than 100 tons of water). There are now streams all over this property, all of them heading for Darkwood Road, our Big Drain, and all of this storm water adds to the developing flood a few metres from where I sit. The rain will be intense all the way up to the Catchment.
By now it’s clear that nothing short of a miracle will stop the river breaking its banks because as it rises onto and over the bridge, water from the nearby high ground, the Deer Park, the slopes above and behind the house and the West End (the location of old gardens here) is forming streams. A sizeable creek starts flowing between the carport and the house. The entrance track is already under water. The colour of the rising river indicates the torrent is picking up tonnes of soil and redistributing it. Loose soils aren’t a good sign: that implies land clearing and logging, two activities requiring permits (whether ‘legal’ or illegal, any such clearing and logging produces debris: unwanted timbers such as casuarina and discarded branches are ‘sometimes’ left illegally in the riparian zones of the river for the next flood to collect and move downstream). Logs of all ages, shapes and sizes form the dense parts of debris carried by the flood. Some are ancient and decomposing timbers; some, with bark intact, have recently been chain-sawed.
The bridge is now under water and invisible. The air is densely wet and looks smokier than ever. There’s also an electrical storm and using the computer is too risky. I lug the garden furniture up to the west deck (where the front steps are) and stow garden tools under the house (across the beams). Logs start appearing in the river. Big logs race by like fearsome marine animals; it’s astonishing to see how fast the river can move: like a pent-up athlete raring to go. The light fades. By sunset the river is moving very quickly—that’s always surprising to see because the Bellinger is so serpentine and you’d think the bends would slow the river down (Earthrise, the house, is tucked into a bend and also is founded on an ancient riverbank; I can also see both the upriver bend and the downriver one). At night I listen to the rain and to the roar of the flood continuing to rise. I expect the flood to breach the lawns/riverbank edge during the night. Heavy rain continues (the news will later reveal that about 300-mm fell in a six hours period).
I give up trying to sleep and get dressed at 03:00 (Wednesday, April 1 2009), expecting the worst. It’s too dark to see anything beyond the spotlight on the west deck: tree trunks are all running, there’s ponding on that part of Big Lawn close to the house and to the old river bank (the house concrete block foundations are set in this ‘ancient’ bank; the Theatre Garden (now overgrown, but with a beautiful layered slab curved wall extends the old curve of that bank into Rum Corner). There’s water everywhere. The retaining wall behind the house sparkles with glow-worms and luminous fungi on the old trees shine in the Wet. I watch the curtain of silver rain pounding down; it glistens prettily in the spotlight. Then I turn off the deck light, retire inside to drink coffee and wait uneasily for dawn. I don’t use the computer because of the lightning and the power failures. After dozing in a lounge chair I see at first light that the BIG stack of logs (dumped by the February flood) is being teased by the flooding backflow. The backflow is always a result of the flooding river running into the downstream hillside 50-m away; part of that torrent then sweeps back or eddies toward my boundary until the river is high enough for that unusual upstream surging to force its way past the stack of logs and the old stone banks and revetments I built there years ago. Another part of that great swirling mess is the dynamic that drives a large whirlpool: it pulls passing logs from centre-stream, threatens to release the debris in another direction, but always recaptures it. The whirlpool collects an enormous amount of material until it’s a Sargasso that’s able to support birds and water dragons. This great mass will sometimes settle on the riverbank and partly in the Earthrise gardens, but when the flood’s high there are different forces at work. On this occasion the flood is high enough to breach upstream and then run through the lower paddocks of the Deer Park, picking up and dropping some logs and debris as it knocks down the fences, then surges over the road before raging through the gardens here. This action not only wrecks the road 2-4-m beneath the torrent, it meets the incoming backflow flood and being higher than the backflow, pushes the ‘lower’ waters (and its accompanying stacks of debris) back toward the river. The Darkwood Road torrent, now also a river, runs into the flood coming from the Deer Park paddocks: the floodwaters take the obvious course to the mainstream: across Earthrise. Debris dumped here usually floats toward the mainstream too, but only when the floodwaters peak and turn. Most of the debris stacks unable to reach the river settle along the edge of the lawn and the top of the riverbank. In a high flood, most of the debris will be dumped near the corner, i.e., in a dense mass over my waterlines. Thus, the pattern of logs and general debris dumped here is markedly different for moderate and for higher floods.
On Wednesday morning at breakfast time I try to read e & answer emails while the phone rings and the gardens begin disappearing beneath the brown waters. I turn the computer off and start moving Stuff—mostly books, photographs, family history files, and eventually the computer--upstairs. First I get out of my clothes and into my swimmers, then go out and haul the canoe up onto the deck and tether it to the handrail in case I have to bail out (as I did in 2001). I don’t rush, nor do I dawdle. The 2001 flood reached the top step of the house (west deck) and this flood is about to reach the foundations 2.5-m below the deck/house floor level) as Bruno calls from his car. I have calls from family (it was Pam’s birthday on Tuesday, Carl’s on April 1) and from Tracey Furner (Bruce being in Nepal with his daughter and I’m surprised that they could speak and see one another on mobile phones). I start hearing voices: I have visitors. Daniel and Dylan, soaked, have managed to get down from Dreamtime close to the house. They’re offering assistance. I say I’m OK and point to the canoe. I’ll stay as long as I can and thank them both. Later, Robert calls from the Deer Park; he also offers assistance should I need it (he has the tractor and can help move whatever has to be moved). Leif calls in the afternoon to ask if I need anything (he’s attempting to reach Bellingen via the Yo-Yo Road (a logging track on high ground, far above the house). He has a 4 WD vehicle and will carry a chainsaw. Des calls from Cessnock. I’m grateful for the concern and offers of help, but I want to remain here unless it’s essential that I evacuate, so I thank the callers and continue moving Stuff. I’m particularly relieved that the power hasn’t failed and that the phone is still OK. I keep an anxious eye on the flood until I’m sure that it’s slowing (by watching the patterns of incoming torrents from the two directions noted above) and by regularly checking markers that I can see from the lounge (stones in the two paths up to the house and the varying distance between bleeding heart tree seedlings in one of the paths). Sure enough and to my vast relief, the flood peaks and soon begins slowly to fall; it drops nearly a metre in the next few hours. The citrus trees near the road begin clearing and I can see how blocked the fence-line is: debris is jammed tight there. Parts of the Dogs Garden reappear, the fences are down as are most of the dahlias and roses then the adjoining lawn starts to clear. I leave the house and get to the front gate after wading the creek and the entrance track. The road looks disastrous. There’s a big gap between the concrete swale at the gate and the road. I meet Robert and we chat while standing in cold water; his fences are all down. I offer to help recover the flattened gate and posts, but Robert will do it later, he says. He moves off through the floodwaters. I begin tearing away at the logs, branches and living grass clumps and complete privet plants and returning them all to the flood (most of the road is still flooded). I manage to clear most of my fence-line by returning the debris to the flood but I’m soaked and exhausted. I change and rest, dozing off, uncertain of the time when Sharon calls in the early evening.
Thursday, April 2 2009. What a mess. Most of the lawns are clear and muddy. I’d given them a recent close mow and although it’s still overcast I can see clearly the greenness, the new growth and also the river’s gift of silt and mud. This is like a top dressing and most welcome; it also helps to level the ‘rise’ in Earthrise. The (south) back of Big Lawn is still a big pond (or small lake) and I realize that it’s being sustained by springs in and above the Old Riverbank (where our original campsite was in 1984). This water drains toward the exit path around the walls of the Belvedere. The Belvedere looks good because so much of the flooding has not only dumped soils, but has spread the soil: the Belvedere surface has never looked more level (Tai Chi chaps will be pleased to know). The nice new grass on the Belvedere is still there (mostly) and covered by fine flotsam; the ONE remaining bleeding heart tree seedling was treated gently by a 2-m overburden of crazy river and may survive; the faithful old red salvia is mashed into the mud, but I know she’ll be OK once I pick her up and prop her; the new grevillea nearby has taken another pounding and I carefully pick her up and prop her too. Unfortunately, the receding flood has enabled big logs to knock down the largest bleeding heart tree: poor fruit pigeons, poor tree. I’ll do what I can to free her and lift and prop her, but she’s down and battered. We’ll see. I’m the Belvedere’s gardener, after all. The February log pile has disappeared. In its place is a new stack, nearby and it’s crunched my pipelines again. I measure the biggest piece of old log: it’s a hollow and quite old chunk of river-oak (casuarina) and is 900-mm in diameter; now it’s the new conversation piece (the February conversation piece on Big Lawn has, of course, disappeared without trace). Sigh. Maybe I can recover some firewood from this Big Log one sunny day?
Friday, April 3 2009. I check some of my markers, and although it’s muddy everywhere I bring my tape and measure as best I can: the ‘top’ side of Big Lawn was about 2-m under and the low side, closest to the house, was submerged to 3-m plus another 2-m up to the house foundations. Living ‘on the river’ takes on a different meaning. Locals begin appearing, but this is a very slow to recede flood. I was on the bridge at first light and had to struggle across the deck. The far approach is washed out (again). I chat with neighbours. Meg and Joyce arrive and photograph me on the bridge. Joyce tells me ‘This is such a beautiful place.’ It is, too. I’ve lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere, for almost 25 years. They say that Daniel and others have made it possible, using the Dreamtime tractor to open the road further upstream that explains how Meg is able to drive this far. By nightfall the bridge deck is clear, almost; the river has fallen less than a metre since daybreak. Saturation. Late in the afternoon there are sunny breaks and so I totter up the hill to recover the Honda and bring her home (I have to put flood debris down to fill some of the gap between the wrecked road and the concrete swale).
Saturday, April 4 2009. More rain—about 100-mm—is forecast and storms are predicted. Enough already! But here’s it’s presently a clear morning and the river still high except that now the river’s colour is a chalky green (think a few drops of crème de menthe added to too many drops of water). I Take A Walk, the first in about 6 days, and with hat and my bush stick, I swing down to the lawn, careful not to slide as if on a luge, and tiptoe in my old river tennis shoes across the muddied but enlivened grass to the road and the bridge where I spy out the best means to cross from bridge to stony shore because there’s still a big hole where the approach should be. I wade carefully through the casuarinas and on a raised bed of river stones pristinely scrubbed, sands and gravels, all newly deposited, and get through the shallows, to creep squelchingly through the mud and continue along the unusually deserted road. With the exception of patches of yellow flower petals along the way the road looks almost as though mortared or mined; parts of it are missing, for the rain has been as tumultuous here as on the river. Nigel comes up behind me on a pushbike and we chat as we go before he cycles on alone and then returns; he says the next bridge is passable, just. The hillside at Richardson’s near the west-side approach looks like a Swiss cheese. I return thoughtfully. Not long after that the rain arrives. Had I imagined the earlier sunshine?
I watch some locals crossing from both sides of the bridge. A couple of vehicles arrive on each side; thus, I know that the road and bridges are surely open now. I see a Council ute appear and the driver photographing the scene (who then is joined by a near neighbour offering Comments I cannot hear).
Daniel and Maree appear in the garden, booted and coated, ready to tractor some fines up from the ditches to Dreamtime, which is OK by me and we chat across dripping spaces. They don’t need my permission because the gravels and stones aren’t mine (they once were Road but now fill the ditches) and the Dreamtimers have a hole to fill. They are also generous and kind neighbours and they ask if they can assist me in any way (the Big House at Dreamtime is empty and they can fix it up for me if necessary, and…); and some neighbours are like that. If it ever dries out here I know they’ll be pleased to help me to discourage those logs and stacks of debris from settling here permanently because they’ve several times offered to. Which is why I sometimes feel fortunate indeed, if not blessed. And I feel so grateful for the messages and prayers, too; thank you, all.
The rain stops but more people visit (like those from Upstream last evening who photographed the house from the bridge, having perhaps realized for the first time that somebody is living here: the lights were on, it was misty, I was upstairs looking at my domain at the end of the day). Now it’s afternoon. Tractor sounds. Children laughing. The first ute arrives packed with rafting and kayak Stuff. The river’s a playground, after all. When I look down from upstairs I can see exactly what has to be done: steel rake and plastic (grass) rake plus the big shovel will enable me to pick up the gravel and stones dropped in long river-ed lines across Big Lawn—but only when the lawn dries; the wheelbarrow will be used too; the axe and log-flinging will allow me to clear an access, touch wood, around the Belvedere; some pipeline lifting to dispel airlocks (where possible near the house) may enable me to pump water to storage again, provided the line isn’t entirely wrecked (although I succeeded in this in after the February flood); all the stone-walled gardens will have to be repaired or rebuilt (a job I’ve already planned to start in winter). And now the river’s an unlovely grey-green and the invigorated pond on Big Lawn is an unattractive brown. Oh well. One day when there are no floods during summer or autumn I may be able to mow, slash, somehow cut down the large-bladed Queensland grass (which grows 2-3m high every season and has clumped root systems best removed by a tractor or bulldozer—and this grass seeds early every March, like clockwork) and I resolve, every year, that I’ll get it done next year for sure: it’s just another job. And one day I may get as far as the West End again and recommence destroying lantana up there. It’s just as well that the jobs will never run out; how uninteresting that would be. Now, for some strange reason I remember Frost’s lines from Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening:

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Earthrise, April 4 2009.

It’s still April 27 as I continue scribbling. I recently came across a file of Series I Earthrise Diaries. Here are some Archived Words from April 1986:

April 1986. Vernon Kretzmann has been staying with us since Sunday and he left today to begin the great journey home to Cape Town. The Indian summer continued when he arrived here last Sunday from Vancouver and -5 temperatures in Ann Arbor. Yesterday we had a real thunderstorm and the creek started to flow; today, showers—all this at a time when we’ve had bone dry weather for about six weeks. John Morris was visiting and staying at Jasmine. There were clouds of dust everywhere…
The house is coming along nicely: we have some more roof and ridge beams to put up and then it’s the rafters… Jannelle has done most of the month’s work: all of the bedroom floor joists, all of the scarfing [of the poles], most of the roof and ridge beams, with a little help from me.
[I’d returned from a training workshop in California early in March and had then fallen from the top floor while working on the house and was fortunate to have broken only my wrist].
We’ve had this marvelous autumn golden light here too and have spent our late afternoons and sometimes hot extended lunchtimes watching the light in the forest and the reflections on the river. Most of the tourists have been and gone and it’s more peaceful now. I love this autumn weather and I’ve been writing it into my draft novel; it’s fun to write fiction here because the novel’s setting is right here at Earthrise.

April 27 2009. The light is still golden.

This Diary is # 17 in the New Series (previously 1107, 108, 208, 308, 408, 508, 608, 708, 808, 908, 1008, 1108, 1208, 109, 209, 309; this is 409). DDD April 27 2009.